Jon Meoli: The Orioles should have clinched by now. Returns for Westburg and Urías are fine consolation.
Mojo, sure.
Know which teams have mojo? The ones with the most good players, or alternatively the ones with the fewest bad players.
The Orioles have more than they did when they woke up Sunday morning with the returns of Jordan Westburg and Ramón Urías from the injured list. They'll have their full complement when Ryan Mountcastle returns next week. It's all happening not a minute too soon.
This is what this team and this town have been waiting for as the days have grown cooler and shorter. They've been waiting for the Orioles to lock in their spot in the playoffs, too, and for all the computations around what it would have taken to do so at home, simply winning these series would have done it.
It's a shame they didn't. It would have been similarly shameful if they didn't get a chance to put their best on the field again, especially here at Camden Yards.
This team hasn't been at its best for a while, and the mere fact it is leaving here without having clinched a playoff spot shows that. There are a lot of reasons for that, but it now has two fewer excuses with Westburg and Urías back.
The Orioles lost Sunday, yes, but look at the lineup they started this home stand with Tuesday. This version has a much better chance of playoff success than that one, even if it couldn't make it happen Sunday.
Urías and Westburg were part of demonstrating that in the fifth inning. Urías, who based on his pre-injury form is overqualified to bat eighth, singled from that spot. A batter later, Cedric Mullins homered in the No. 9 spot to pull his OPS back over .700. At that point in the game, every Orioles batter, 1-9, was above that mark. Mullins has had far higher lineup assignments lately, but now the top three spots in the Orioles lineup are reserved for All-Stars.
The best of them, Gunnar Henderson, walked after Mullins homered. Then Westburg stroked a run-scoring double into the gap, the kind of hit it only anecdotally felt the Orioles have been lacking for the seven-plus weeks since he went on the injured list, and at once the sellout crowd at Camden Yards was reminded that this is the team such hope was held out for.
Not the one that limped through the last month-plus, admirably holding serve but doing so with young prospects struggling to find themselves or other teams' rejects on the field every single night. Their contributions will always be noted, and they're still better than the waiver-wire finds of years past.
Westburg and Urías, in addition to their defensive reliability, deepen the Orioles' lineup significantly. That's eight or nine consistent professional at-bats each night, and though the production when it counts has fallen in September, the Orioles' six regulars in that span — Henderson, Adley Rutschman, Mullins, Ryan O'Hearn, Colton Cowser and Anthony Santander — still had a collective .755 OPS and 116 wRC+ this month.
That's comfortably in the top third of baseball if it wasn't for, you know, the rest of the team. Now, the rest of the team is better.
For opponents, that means no rest periods as the lineup turns over. If you get yourself into trouble with the top of the Orioles' lineup, there are capable run producers waiting with them on base. If you don't get the bottom of the order out, you're just turning over the lineup to a trio of All-Stars, often the players who have come through the most for these Orioles. Having Westburg in the mix at the top of the lineup takes pressure off the stars around him. Having Urías steadying things at the bottom will make this team better. Mountcastle will make a complete first base platoon with O'Hearn instead of forcing the latter to play every day.
It could all very well be too little, too late. But there's no magic mojo potion that helps teams win games. That comes down to having as many good players as possible. The Orioles have a chance because they have a lineup full of them now.
